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Because they have plans that can make them profitable in the future? No

Because they don't care about profits? No

They're buying them because they want to influence opinions.

The blatant campaigning in Murdoch's papers in the recent Australian elections shows the lengths to which people like him are willing and able to go in order to influence us.

Why do they want to influence our opinions? To increase profits in their other businesses; they use their news-businesses to increase the profits of their non-news businesses.

In Rupert Murdoch's case in the recent elections, the ALP's plans for a high-speed Internet service capable of providing Internet TV were a threat to Murdoch's monopoly pay-TV service, so he wanted to eliminate this threat by supporting the Coalition who promised a much slower network incapable of providing Internet TV.

So my claim is this: if you consume news from businesses that are not making profits, then you are exposing yourself to attempts (subtle or blatant) to influence your opinion and your vote.

Or to alter a popular phrase:

if you're not paying for a news product then your opinion is the product

So what do we do? We identify news-businesses whose only business is to provide news and we pay for their products - we make them profitable. If they're profitable in their own right then they don't need to compromise their content. Any help in identifying candidates would be appreciated.

If the desire to influence opinions is the primary motivation (which I'm happy to agree is the case), then your "don't need to compromise their content" supplier will also use their profits to gain control of more news suppliers and so control more opinion.

I may have been unclear. The point I'm trying to make is that if a news-business is not profitable then there must necessarily be a motivation other than deriving profit from supplying news, such as manipulating opinion. On the other hand, if a news-business is profitable then it has the option of growing simply by trying to improve the quality of its product (i.e. news). I'm not arguing that it will necessarily make that choice, but I'm saying that it has the option.

Ironically, in a way I'm rehashing an argument that Murdoch himself has been making for years, which is that it's impossible to make money from a news-business if people aren't prepared to pay for it. Rather than divesting himself of news-businesses he's instead chosen to try to use them to make his other businesses more profitable, thereby lowering the quality of the information he provides.

Ironically, again, the very visible way in which he's done this serves to prove (to me at least) that we can't have quality news for free. If we want quality then we have to pay for it, and since Murdoch is not providing this quality then he should not be the recipient of the money we're willing to pay for it.